by Lily Thomas
Ignoring the pain in her leg, Adira stood and took a look around the room that contained her cell. The room was small, probably a brig, with two or three cells that she could see. Other than a console in the middle of the floor, there was nothing for her to use. There were also no guards, but she assumed someone was stationed outside the doors.
All right, if she didn’t have anything to work with currently in the room, she’d have to expand her options. “Hey!” she shouted. "Let me out!"
It took nearly a half hour of shouting and banging around the cell, but finally, Adira thought she heard voices outside the brig. She leaned over and gave her calf a final check. It was still discolored, but she thought that was more due to the dye from the suit than anything else. When she flexed it and put weight on her leg, it felt normal.
Adira picked up her helmet and secured it over her head. It might not work in zero gravity anymore, but it would prevent them from seeing her face and might put them off guard. She needed any advantage she could get at this point.
Adira turned to the door of the brig as it slid open, and a couple of Sri'thaen males strode into the room and up to her cell.
A soldier with exceptionally large eyebrows glared at her. "Take off your helmet."
"No." From behind the reflective glass, Adira studied her captors. She could read in their gray eyes that they had something nasty planned for her. She'd seen that look many times in the chief's eyes.
"We will come in there and force it off your head. Comply with our request." He barked.
"No."
Bushy Brows spoke into a communication piece around his wrist. "Come in. We will need assistance with this one."
Adira smiled as a few more Sri'thaen guards strode into the brig.
They were scared of her because of what she'd been able to do earlier. She wanted to chortle in delight. All these tall, robust soldiers were afraid of a little human woman. Adira’s smile widened beneath her helmet. They had good reason to be scared.
The blue force field went down, and two guards rushed in. She gave one a solid punch to the lower jaw. His head snapped back, and she used the edge of her hand to chop into his exposed throat. In a moment, he was on the ground gagging.
His buddy caught her upper arm and tried to pin her against the wall. Moving quickly, she swept her opposite arm up to break his hold and secured his wrist in a painful lock. She twisted his wrist, and he dropped to his knees.
The leader, Bushy Brows, was speaking rapidly into his communicator. Adira kicked the second guard in the face and strode into the middle of the room. The remaining men reached for their weapons.
Adira grabbed the nearest soldier and slammed an elbow into his stomach. He doubled over, and she tossed him into a guard while slipping his weapon out of his hand. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a plasma pistol. It looked like a hand-held weapon, a short black stick with two points of metal at the tip. Brushy Brows did have a pistol, and he raised it toward her.
Adira threw her weapon across the room and knocked the pistol out of his hand. It fell to the ground, and they both leaped for it, grappling on the floor.
More Sri’thaens poured into the room. They caught her from behind and pulled her off of the lead Sri’thaen before she could recover.
Ol’ Bushy struggled to his feet, his tidy uniform askew. If looks could kill, she’d be lying in a shallow grave right now.
“Remove her helmet.” He ground out.
One of the men stripped off her helmet. The Sri’thaen with bushy eyebrows leaned in. Adira hocked a loogie and spat it into his face. He flinched, and she smirked.
His hand whipped out and smacked her jaw. She felt her skin break, and blood dripped from the corner of her mouth. She thanked the implants that dulled her nerve endings and toned down the pain, but the force of the blow still left her head ringing for a moment.
"Secure her." Barked her adversary.
The men holding her dragged her into one of the alcoves that she thought had been another cell. Instead, a metal table sat in the middle of it, and instruments covered the walls. It seemed the Sri’thaens preferred to extract information via torture.
A memory welled up, and she saw herself lying on another metal table, in another time and place. A needle slowly descended toward the soft tissue of her eye.
"No!" Adira yelled. She struggled against the arms that held her. Adira wasn't afraid of the table and the pain that would come, but she was afraid of the memories.
It was no use. The Sri'thaens had her firmly restrained now, and one by one they secured her limbs with metal cuffs to the table’s surface.
Bushy dismissed the extra guards and came forward with a knife held firmly in his hand. A smile adorned his lips. What did he plan on taking? A finger? A toe?
The Sri'thaen pulled at her suit where the plasma blast had melted it. The suit ripped off her skin at the edges of the newly healed wound, and Adira bit back a scream. Enhancements or not, that hurt like hell.
Her new friend slipped the knife between her skin and the suit and sawed away at the sturdy material. Within moments, he had slit her suit up from the leg and across her torso, like a fish being gutted. Working his way out, he cut away the suit and stripped it from her body. Adira lay on the cold metal table, clad only in a red bra and panties, the only useless thing the chief had ever given her.
"If you're trying to make me uncomfortable, you'll have to do better than this." Adira snorted.
The Sri'thaen swept her body with an interested gray-eyed gaze and raised a bushy eyebrow. There was a gleam in his eyes as he glanced at her scantily clad body that made her body crawl with revulsion. Then he looked up at her face, and the gleam disappeared. "It might not make you uncomfortable, but it'll make torturing you a little easier."
She snorted again. The chief had exposed her to all kinds of torture in virtual simulations. She’d had her fingernails pulled off, her flesh burned, her intestines pulled out. Their torture would result in exactly zero information from her lips.
He placed the knife against the soft flesh of her stomach and made a quick, small cut across her skin. His eyes watched her face the whole time, gauging her reaction. She made none.
"Interesting." He commented. He pulled a black stick off of the wall, similar to the weapon she’d thrown at him earlier. He held it above her face, and the two points of metal at the tip crackled with blue energy as he pushed a button on the long handle.
"My general wants some answers from you." He leaned down and growled in her ear, before pressing the stick against her temple. Blue energy zapped along her head, and Adira was momentarily blinded by blue sparks. "I will get him the answers he wants. The more you speak, the less pain you will experience."
Pain shot through her brain as he shocked her again, but her mouth stayed clamped shut. She'd give him no satisfaction by letting out a single whimper.
"Who are you? Obviously, Earth Alliance sent you. When did they begin experimenting with human augmentation? You can’t be a normal human woman. I’ve been told of how weak your species is, but you’ve surprised us all. How many more of you are there?" His gray eyes tried to read her reactions as he sent question after question at her.
Her hazel eyes glared daggers, but she kept her mouth firmly closed.
The next jolt lasted several seconds, and despite her resolve, she couldn't stop the scream that ripped from her throat. The pain was intensely focused and acute. It felt like her enhancements didn’t even exist.
To distract herself from the pain, she focused in on Bushy’s double-pointed ears. She’d spent her life studying other species, and she’d never encountered that trait before. She scrutinized his ear. Did it enhance their hearing? If she ever made it out of here, all of the information she learned about the Sri’thaens would be valuable.
"How long have you been on board our ship?" Her tormentor’s gray eyes flashed with annoyance at her insistent silence. He probably expected a human female to be easier to break.
Adir
a just stared back. No answers would slip from her lips. Nothing he did to her would break her. The chief had made sure of that. "If you knew the pain I'd gone through before this… Your pathetic energy sticks will do nothing." She laughed at him.
He zapped her again and again until she finally passed out from the searing pain. As she slipped into unconsciousness, her memories came out to torture her some more.
A boy walked up to her. His brown hair had been shaved down to his scalp, leaving only a slight stubble, like all the other children in the room.
"Give me your bread." He demanded, reaching his hand out, waiting for her to comply.
"No." Adira backed away from him. This was her first meal in days, and she was reluctant to give it up. If she didn't eat something, she would waste away. She'd seen other kids die in here. She wasn’t going to be one of them.
The boy grabbed the front of her shirt. He was taller, bigger. "I said give it over. Or do I have to beat you to a pulp like Robert?"
Adira’s chin set in a hard line. Robert had been weak. She wasn’t.
“Fine.” Pretending to give in, she dropped her head and held out the piece of bread.
The boy snatched it and turned away, and in a moment she was on him. Her arm wrapped around his neck, and she yanked with all the strength left in her small body. There was a sickening snap. The boy dropped to the ground, motionless.
She bent over and picked up her slice of bread.
A door slid open, and one of the adults walked into the room. She grabbed Adira by the arm and led her to another room where there were no other children.
Instead, there was a table set with two chairs, and a hot meal on it. Baked chicken with mashed potatoes, and gravy dripping over everything. Adira didn’t wait for permission. She ran over to the table and started eating, scooping up the potatoes with her fingers.
Another adult came into the room, a man that Adira had heard the other adults refer to as “the chief”. The chief walked over and took a seat across the table. Under his penetrating gaze, she stopped eating. He leaned over and held up a fork. “You’re not an animal, Adira. Eat properly, or I’ll take it away.”
Adira nodded slowly and took the fork.
"You're a good girl, Adira. Would you like more meals like this?"
She nodded eagerly. She was half starved, her collarbone jutting up through her thin skin. She'd do anything for another meal like this one.
"Good. I watched you kill that boy today. He underestimated you, and you used that to defeat him.” The chief leaned forward. “I want you to show me your strength, Adira. I want you to kill again.”
Chapter 3
"How long until we reach the first human colony?" Rakshasas asked. His pilot turned in his chair.
"Three days, sir. I could get us there faster, but the cloak might not hold up under that speed."
"Hmm… keep the cloak up. If it takes three days, then it takes three days." He didn't want to risk the humans seeing them coming. If he surprised them, then he might shock some sense into the colonists.
At the next console, Rakshasas’s weapons master spoke up. “Sir, will we be bombarding the planet the moment we reach it?”
Rakshasas steepled his fingers together. “No.” He turned to the rest of the bridge crew. “We will give them one last warning to leave.”
His men looked at each other.
His weapons master cleared his throat. "Excuse me, sir, but aren’t our orders to prevent them from fleeing?"
“If the humans refuse to leave, then we will start the bombardment.”
The soldiers shifted uneasily, but Rakshasas ignored them. He’d been mulling over his orders. The Empire had instructed him to give no further warnings and to exterminate every last human. The Earth Alliance had been told not to expand into Sri’thaen space, but their “colonists” had viewed unoccupied planets as fair game. As far as the Empire was concerned, the actions of the colonists had sealed the fate of every human in the galaxy.
First, Rakshasas was to take out the two “colonized” planets. Then, his fleet would head into Earth Alliance space and begin destroying their worlds and any ships they came across.
Rakshasas saw his task as impossible. It wasn’t that he worried about facing the Earth Alliance defenses. Their military was a joke compared to his forces. Unfortunately, the Empire meant their orders literally. He would have to kill each individual human, both inside and out of Earth Alliance space. The mission would take decades if it could be accomplished at all.
There was still a chance that the Empire might rescind their orders if Rakshasas wasn’t forced to attack. If the arrival of Sri’thaen warships scared away the colonists and left the planets intact, perhaps he could persuade his connections on the council to spare humanity their gruesome fate. And spare him the fate of a lifetime hunting across the galaxy.
The door to the bridge slid open, and one of his men entered and saluted.
"What news of the prisoner?" He was intrigued to learn what progress they'd made with the interrogation. He’d been surprised to learn that a human had managed to board their ship and a human woman at that. It seemed the Human Alliance had a few tricks up their sleeves after all.
"Yes, general. It was a human who boarded the ship. Unfortunately, we haven't gotten any information out of her… as of yet. But we will keep it up."
"Why not? Can you not break a human prisoner? Maybe I have the wrong man handling the situation." Rakshasas couldn't believe this man’s incompetence.
The soldier cleared his throat, probably remembering the time Rakshasas had tossed a man out of the airlock for disappointing him.
"She is more resilient then we expected her to be. I would've thought a human woman would be weak… instead, she is… impressive."
Rakshasas rubbed his chin. The prisoner’s resilience was impressive. Maybe he underestimated his enemy.
"I will go down to the brig to interrogate the prisoner myself since you're unable to do it." His gray eyes flashed as he leaned down to growl into the other man's face.
Let him tremble a bit. Maybe it would improve his future performance.
As Rakshasas made his way through the ship, his men stood to the side of the corridors as he passed, their backs pressed against the walls, heads bowed. The deference of his men was well-earned, but as he walked, he reflected that his rise to power had also given him many enemies. He would have to manage this affair with the humans carefully, lest someone decide they would do a better job as leader of the fleet.
Rakshasas paused outside the brig doors, getting himself mentally prepared for the game of wills he would most likely play with this human spy. He handled his problems head-on like he would handle this one.
Rakshasas stepped into the room and strode over to the “persuasion room,” as they were called. He was greeted by the sight of an unconscious human woman. Her head had fallen to the side so he couldn’t see her face, but her brown hair spilled across the table in a delicate fan. She was surprisingly dainty, and he was amazed this fragile creature had been able to withstand hours of torture at the hands of his men.
Rakshasas knew that his men suspected some kind of technological augmentation. As a weaker species, humans relied on their technology. He couldn’t see any evidence of cybernetic implants, but the woman’s body was slender and toned, clearly designed for combat.
Rakshasas’s hand hovered over the scraps of red clothing that she wore. The garments were similar to what the women of his own species wore when seducing a man. Red was an invitation for a Sri'thaen, but he doubted the small human knew that. Still, he couldn’t help thinking of other…physical…activities that her fit body would be well suited for.
Rakshasas shook his head. Self-consciously, he returned his hand to his side and walked around the table.
The human’s face was well-formed. Her eyes were closed, but he took in a sharp nose, high cheekbones, and full lips. He brushed a stray lock of hair off of her forehead, and as his fingers touched
her skin, he felt a swelling in his groin.
He cursed softly. He was no first-year cadet, to be so distracted by a pretty face. Beneath his fingers, he saw her eyelids twitch.
Turning away, he picked up a syringe from a shelf and used it to inject her with a blue solution. Clearly, their normal forms of interrogation weren’t going to work. It was time to see if she could be reasoned with. Or manipulated.
Rakshasas waited a few minutes and then proceeded to remove the restraints. As he released the last cuff, the human woman’s eyes popped open.
She jumped up on the table in a crouch. Her hazel eyes darted to his face, and her foot followed, connecting with his jaw.
Rakshasas stumbled back in surprise. He knew she’d been faking unconsciousness, which is why he’d given her enough drugs to make a Kiradon stallion loopy.
He gingerly felt his jaw. Not broken, but definitely sore. He was glad she hadn't gone for his nose. Slowly, his approached her with his hands up and his palms out, but she lashed out once more with her tiny, yet powerful, foot.
This time, Rakshasas blocked her kick and grabbed her ankle. "You want a fight?" He yanked. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
The human woman lost her balance and fell onto her back. She kicked out with her free leg, and Rakshasas released her ankle to dodge the blow. In a flash, she rolled off the other side of the metal table, using it as a barrier between them.
He feigned right and then went left. The roll, combined with the drugs in her system, seemed to have disoriented her. Before she could move, he snatched her arm and brought her in, but her fist came up and clipped him on the chin. Her heel met his shin.
He let out a grunt but refused to let go. Twisting her around, he wrapped an arm around her neck. The human woman leaned her head back, searching for air, and for a second, he was dazzled by her flashing hazel eyes. Then her elbow connected with his stomach, and his arm loosened enough for her to slip out of his grasp.